New from RMA: How to protect trees from construction

February 2012 
Everything that goes around comes around. It's Embassy Row's turn to have huge street-digging machines as guests for coming months, as DC Water (formerly WASA) digs streets, sidewalks and yards.

The Big Dig is part of a zillion dollar replacement, mile by mile, of the city's antiquated Combined Sewer System (CSS) to comply with a settlement with EPA under the Clean Water Act. Fancy words aside, we neighbors don't want sewage overflowing from the pipes into Rock Creek during "rain events." Or do we?

DC Water warned the neighborhood its monsters would invade.  For DC Water, Bruce Beall presented the plans to our Advisory Neighborhood Commission and has been responsive to our concerns including for the trees. Tree roots carry storm water into the ground, lessening flow into Beall's pipes.

In a Big Dig, in just seconds, one of these behemoths can wreck a tree limb or an entire tree, or trench the root systems.  (The digger is liable for tree damage.) Building contractors pile huge loads next to young trees, and leave them there, compacting soil and stalling tree growth.

To protect city trees, especially the newer trees that Restore Mass Ave and dozens of property owners are trying to grow, we made a flyer. It gives highlights of the rules, and  steps you can take to stop workers and machines that threaten trees. It has links to regulations, and whom to call if.

Download our free flyer to learn how you can protect trees from nearby construction.

We're grateful to RMA's main TreeWatchers: Donna Hays and Alan Jacobs are out on the sidewalks "reminding" Big Dig crews to be careful. And to Kindy French, and the Kenya Embassy, for helping to publicize our flyer. <need link to the pdf here> Below, we hung it to a tree at a bus stop - at eye level - so people will learn how to save trees while waiting for the bus.

Uncle Tree Needs YOU!  If you want to make a phone app, so more people in DC learn to protect trees, contact us at restoremassave@gmail.com.

Catoctin protects trees during embassy renovation

January 2012
One of Embassy Row's most famous Beaux Arts mansions, the Cameroon Embassy at 2349 Mass Avenue, is undergoing a massive renovation.

Too often, "renovation" means overflowing dumpsters, huge fork-lifts, panzer-like trucks and piles of stones and pipes on a site's greenspace for months -- in the name of "fixing up the place."

This time could be different. Catoctin Construction Management and the Embassy are committed to protecting the two young American elm trees, which Restore Mass Ave arranged for the Embassy  in our planting with Casey Trees in November 2009.

We chose the species Ulmus americana 'Valley Forge' and precise sites so these trees would add the most value for decades. They would shade the building interior, saving energy; they would help the public notice the features of this "Loire chateau" from far up the avenue. When we visited the Ambassador in his office (in the former ballroom on the main floor, i.e. the floor above street level) we discussed how the tree crowns would shape his views looking out at the magnificent street.

We're grateful to Catoctin's Will Kessinger, Johnny Loomis and Jeff Scott for their commitment to their client's young elms. Also for watering a new cherry tree we planted in the park across the street, which has no local water source otherwise; now the cherry may enhance future Mass Ave views too. (Photo: Rob Nevitt)

 

Below is one of these elms being planted by volunteers in 2008. Also shown is the Ambassador speaking that day with the DC schoolchildren who participated. He told them Cameroon is an equatorial country and hot like Washington; both need tall trees, he said. Three years on, we at Restore Mass Ave are thrilled by Catoctin's care for this landscape. If it continues through the end of this huge job, the firm will have done its part to realize the vision of high tree crowns, deep shade and lovely views of this corner of Embassy Row.  (Photos: RMA)

 
Below, the eye-catching "chateau" designed by George Oakley Totten in 1908, photographed in 1968 when the "chateau" was the Embassy of Czechoslovakia. (Photo: Washingtoniana Collection, MLK Library)